The Effects Model or The Hypodermic Model

This model tells us the consumption of media texts has an EFFECT or INFLUENCE upon the audience.

It is normally considered that this effect is NEGATIVE.

Audiences are PASSIVE and powerless to prevent the influence. They are MANIPULATED by the text.

The power lies with the message of the text.

Also known as The Hypodermic Model as the messages in media texts are INJECTED into the audience by the powerful, SYRINGE-LIKE media and the audience is powerless to resist.

Therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is DRUGGED, DOPED and DUPED and the audience can become ADDICTED.

Key Evidence for the Effects Model

1.The FRANKFURT SCHOOL theorised in the 1920's and 1930's that the mas media acted to restrict and control audiences to the benefit of corporate capitalism and governments.

2. (DOMINANT THEORY)

The Bobo Doll Experiment

This is a very controversial piece of research that apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour.

Conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura

In the experiment:

• children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown toy a Bobo Doll
• The children were then taken to a room with attractive toys that they were not permitted to touch.
• The children were then led to another room with Bobo Dolls.
• 88% of the children imitated the violent behaviour that they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the children reproduced the same violent behaviour.

THE CONCLUSION REACHED WAS THAT CHILDREN WILL IMITATE VIOLENT MEDIA CONTENT

(Criticisms of Bobo Doll experiment:

-does it really prove that children imitate violent media content?

-all children were from the same American nursery in a time of racial and class division; so it is hard to generalise the results

- children seemed to be encouraged to hurt the bobo doll

-children were enticed and made more aggressive by putting them in a room with toys they could not touch)

3. Murder of James Bulger in 1993

Two children aged roughly 10 took 3 year old James Bulger from a shopping centre to a railway track whilst torturing him (e.g. stuck batteries into his anal cavity, cut him and threw stones at him). They then put him on the tracks and waited for a train to run him over. The cause of this was put on the film "CHILDS PLAY 3" (featuring the famous Chuckie Doll) as the children were said to have watched it.

4. The Murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004 by his friend Warren LeBlanc

The murderer was said to have imitated practices from the obsessive game "Manhunt".

5. The film "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) apparently had influence over a number of rapes and violent attacks.

6. The murder of Simon Everitt is said to have been related to the film 'Severance' (2006)

In each of these cases there was a media and political outcry for the texts to be banned. In some cases laws were changed, films banned, and newspapers demanded the burning of films. Subsequently, in each case it was found that NO case could be proven to demonstrate a link between the text and the violent acts.

Other Examples include...

The effects of media advertising; Go Compare, Compare The Market, We Buy Any Car, Shake and Vac, Cilit Bang, Money Supermarket.

The Effects model contributes to MORAL PANICS whereby:

- The media produce inactivity, make us into students who wont pass their exams or 'couch potatoes' who make no effort to get a job

-The media produces violent 'copycat' behaviour or mindless shopping in response to advertisements.

The Effects model (backed up by the Bobo Doll Experiment) is used by politicians, some parts of the media and religious organisations in attributing violence to the consumption of Media texts.